


Haven't Thought of You Lately at All

by shykia1029



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27597079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shykia1029/pseuds/shykia1029
Summary: There are six months in their twenties during which David and Alexis don't speak at all.
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, David Rose/Other(s), Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 11
Kudos: 102





	Haven't Thought of You Lately at All

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from We Used To Be Friends by The Dandy Warhols

David is kind of in love with Andrei immediately. He thinks. He’s 26 but he’s never been in love before so maybe he isn’t. It’s only been a month, and he doesn’t know for sure what being in love feels like. 

What he knows is that Andrei is beautiful and has an addictive Australian accent and hair like spun gold. He knows he would do basically anything to be the one who gets to be held by him, kissed by him, fucked by him. Anything at all to stay where he is right now, in his bed, tracing Andrei’s sleeping face with his eyes over and over and over while he fights sleep. 

He also knows that Andrei knows, that he could see from the beginning that the moment he’d met David at that underground poetry reading and told him- not asked him, _told_ him, which had been almost unbearably hot- that they were going out for dinner that night, he’d had him. 

It used to make David anxious that Andrei could tell just how desperate David was to keep him. David as a general rule tries not to show people that he needs them, no matter how much he does. But now that he’s used to it it’s kind of nice. He doesn’t have to hide it and Andrei doesn’t even ask him to do anything near what he’d be willing to. Sex when David isn’t really in the mood, the occasional threesome that David isn’t particularly excited about. He barely requires anything, really, compared to what David would give him if he asked.

And David loves what he gets in return. Andrei is smart and gorgeous and charming and he could have anyone in New York City, man or woman, and he’s with David of all people. And he says the most beautiful things to David in the most beautiful voice that makes David feel like he’s beautiful just because it’s aimed at him. It takes his breath away when he thinks about it. 

A buzz from his bedside table interrupts his reverie. Groaning as quietly as he can, David rolls over to see who it is even though he knows that there’s only one person who would dare call and risk waking him at 4 AM, and that person probably doesn’t even know it’s 4 AM here anyway because she’s never been one for keeping track of time zones. Unfortunately, she’s also the one person that he would take a call from at 4 AM because he knows that it might literally be a matter of life or death. 

“You had better be bleeding,” he snaps in a whisper as soon as he answers, and immediately regrets it because if she is bleeding it will have been a pretty shitty thing to say. 

Alexis laughs far too loudly, and he winces, pulling the phone away from his ear. “David!” she says, happily enough that he’s pretty sure her life isn’t in imminent danger. “You’re still at that little place in SoHo, right?”

His apartment is actually a really good size for SoHo, but he lets that go. “Yes. What’s going on?”

“So I’m in New York,” Alexis says, then shushes somebody in the background on her end.

“What? Since when?” David asks, sharply, sitting up straight in bed. 

“Since, like, 20 minutes ago. Anyway, Franz just dropped me off at the Pier 6 Helipad really quick before he had to take off again and I was thinking I was pretty close to your place, so I could come stay with you tonight?”

David closes his eyes and sighs. “It’s not a great time,” he says. “I have someone over, and-“

Alexis gasps. “Scandalous,” she says. “Don’t worry, I’ll be super quiet. And I can talk you up in the morning!”

“I don’t need you to talk me up, we’re already… he’s…”

Andrei isn’t David’s boyfriend, because Andrei doesn’t like labels, but at the very least he’s more than some one-night stand David needs to use his sister to get another night with. 

“So I just have to get a cab real quick, I’ll be there soon!” Alexis chirps, then hangs up before he can respond. 

David sighs but gets out of bed because there’s no stopping this now. 

There’s one thing to be said for Alexis: she can sleep anywhere. She’ll bitch a little later about having been relegated to his (extremely expensive and comfortable) sofa, but she’ll be asleep within five minutes of getting on it. She’s slept in much stranger, less comfortable places. 

The only way to avoid Alexis using the apartment’s intercom and waking Andrei is to meet her downstairs. David pulls on his high tops and hates himself and Alexis and whoever the hell Franz is. 

He doesn’t have to wait long in front of his building before a taxi pulls up and Alexis stumbles out of it, opening the door before the car is even fully stopped. 

“David!” she says happily. “I need you to pay the guy, I think I left my purse on the helicopter.”

“Oh my god,” David sighs, but he always has a good amount of cash on him so he tosses what’s probably twice the fare at the driver and grabs Alexis before she can trip over the curb. “Are you high?”

“Mmm,” Alexis hums as she considers the question. “Maybe a little bit still?”

“And the reason you couldn’t just get a hotel room?” he asks as he guides her into the lobby. 

“Because!” Alexis says, too loudly because she’s always too loud when she’s high. “I don’t have my credit cards. And I wanted to see my big brother! You always help me when I’m high.”

“Yeah, when we were kids, don’t you have all those friends who can do this for you now?”

“And on my nineteenth, remember?” Alexis says happily, ignoring the question, or maybe she didn’t even hear it. 

“You weren’t high then, you were wasted and you needed me to take you to get your stomach pumped.”

“I was also really high,” Alexis argues. They’re in the elevator now, and Alexis is pacing around it like she can’t stand still. “So you have a new boy toy! Love that for you.”

“He’s not a boy toy,” David argues. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to argue. Alexis isn’t listening anyway. “Look, can you just be quiet when we go in so you don’t wake him up?”

Alexis mimes zipping her mouth shut, then continues to talk anyway. “Tomorrow we can do brunch and you can tell me all about it,” she says. 

“Quiet,” David reminds her when they reach his door, which he unlocks as slowly and silently as he can. 

“Quiet,” she parrots in a whisper. 

He has to hand it to her, she actually is quiet right up until he has her on the couch and she kicks off her shoes and demands he tuck her in. 

“You know you’re not six, right?” he asks, but she just pouts at him so he kind of half-tosses her blanket on top of her which is apparently enough. He leaves her for about thirty seconds to get her some water and by the time he’s back she’s out. 

He sets the water on the coffee table or her to find when she wakes up and after a minute’s consideration leaves a bottle of Tylenol beside it. Then he looks at her for a second and tries not to acknowledge that annoying as this whole thing was, for at least this one night he knows that she’s safe and that’s kind of nice.

 _I love you,_ he thinks but doesn’t say, even when people are passed out and won’t hear he’s not going to say that out loud. He has the weird urge to bend down and kiss her on the forehead but he doesn’t, he just turns and walks back into his bedroom, leaving her to sleep it off.

David wakes up to someone trailing their fingers down his chest which is really jarring for a second because the last person he remembers seeing before he fell back asleep is Alexis and he really hopes Alexis isn’t in his bed with him trailing her fingers down his chest. 

Then a voice with a truly gorgeous Australian accent murmurs, “Morning.”

“Not morning yet,” David argues half-heartedly, refusing to open his eyes. 

“It’s 8 AM.”

“Not morning yet,” David repeats, and how is Andrei’s chuckle somehow also gorgeously Australian?

David isn’t a morning person but he loves morning sex, at least in theory, because morning sex means that you did well enough at sex the night before that the person already wants you again, even though you haven’t done your hair for the day yet. So he doesn’t protest when Andrei moves his hand lower, or when Andrei starts to guide David’s hand to his own morning hard-on. It’s only when he remembers all of the night before that he opens his eyes and pulls his hand away. 

“Fuck,” he says. “Sorry. We can’t. My sister is here.”

“Your sister?” Andrei actually is a morning person but he’s still not awake enough to understand immediately. 

“Yeah, she called last night because she needed a place to stay and she’s in the living room,” David sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I didn’t want to wake you up. Sorry.”

Andrei sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to shower.”

David wants to be disappointed that they aren’t going to have morning sex but he’s actually really tired so he just nods and lets himself drift back to sleep. 

He wakes up again when Andrei comes back into the room and briefly contemplates whether the need for running interference when Alexis gets up is worth leaving his bed. 

Unfortunately, he knows it is, so he forces himself up and makes his way to the living room to find Alexis stirring. Andrei is just coming out too when Alexis cracks one eye open. 

“Coffee,” she mumbles. It isn’t a question. 

David is extremely well-equipped when it comes to making coffee.

“Espresso or French press?” he asks, ignoring the rudeness of the order because the hangover seems a sufficient punishment for now. 

“Mocha latte,” she says, eyes closed again. 

“I don’t have that.”

“Mocha latte,” she insists. David opens his mouth to argue but before he can Andrei speaks behind him in that gorgeous voice that makes everything better. 

“How about I go for a Starbucks run,” he suggests.

“You don’t have to do that,” David says immediately. Alexis, who apparently forgot that someone else was present, blinks her eyes open in surprise. 

“Yes.” She says. “Do that.” She sits up a little, charming smile at the ready, but when she catches sight of Andrei her face kind of falls. “Oh. Hi.”

“Alexis,” Andrei says, and David is struck by ridiculous jealousy that he’s saying Alexis’ name in that beautiful voice. 

“Andrei,” Alexis says with a smile that looks kind of forced. 

David glances between them as they look at each other. “You two…know each other.”

“We met in New Zealand, what, six months ago? I’m so sorry, Alexis, I must have completely forgotten about you.”

A horrible part of David enjoys hearing that. 

“Mm-hm,” Alexis hums with unconvincing brightness. “So I think you should make that coffee run.”

“Right. Mocha latte and… black for David?”

“Caramel macchiato,” Alexis corrects him, and David glares at her. 

“Black is fine,” he says, and Andrei nods, grabbing his keys on the way out the door. As soon as he’s gone, Alexis turns to David. She’s suddenly wide awake. 

“Um. He has a key?”

“What the hell is going on here?” David demands. “I swear, if I’m dating one of your exes _again_ -“

“No,” Alexis says. “You remember Tasha?”

“No.”

“Okay, so I was in New Zealand with Tasha and she met Andrei at this party, and then they were, like, together for like three weeks.”

“So now I can’t date your friends’ exes?” David demands. 

“I didn’t say…” Alexis looks a little lost for words, which is pretty shocking. “I mean, how long have you…. Is he living here?”

“Is that your business?” It comes out kind of bitchy but it really isn’t her business so he feels justified. 

“I just…” He’s never seen Alexis pick her words so carefully. “I think. You can, like, do better. I don’t like him.”

David rolls his eyes. “Because he dumped your friend after a few weeks in New Zealand. Or what, did you want him first and heaven forbid somebody reject you and want me?”

“No! Because…”

“Because what?”

Alexis stares at him, worrying her lower lip between her teeth, and says nothing. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” David finally says. “You just keep thinking about it, I guess.”

Alexis stays silent as he leaves the room.

He re-enters his living room thirty minutes later. Alexis is gone. Andrei is back, and three Starbucks cups are on the counter, next to where Andrei is trying to fit clothes into his messenger bag. 

“What’s going on?” David asks.

“I have to go,” Andrei says, and David’s blood runs cold. 

“Do you want to do something tonight?” he asks, trying to keep his voice from wavering. “Or just… come over later?”

“I’m not coming back, David.” Andrei actually sounds annoyed at how long it’s taking David to get it even though David got it from the moment he saw Andrei packing up the few articles of clothing he’s been leaving at his apartment lately. 

“Why not? Did Alexis… Whatever Alexis said, it’s not true, okay? I don’t know what she came up with-“

“Your sister is kind of a crazy bitch,” Andrei says bluntly, turning to face David, face neutral. “Okay? God, your whole family. You’re not worth it, David.”

David has heard multiple times that he isn’t worth it. This time hurts more than any of the others. Through the pain he’s struggling to decide if he should desperately agree with Andrei because Alexis can kind of be a crazy bitch or defend her because David is the only one allowed to call her that and Andrei is saying it much more nastily than David ever has. 

“What did she say?” is all he finally manages. 

Andrei shakes his head and wrenches the front door open. “Good luck with…” he gestures vaguely around the apartment, then right at David. “All this.”

And then he’s gone. 

Alexis doesn’t respond to his multiple texts, most of them containing some form of either _Where the fuck are you?_ or _What the fuck did you do?_

Finally, by the time he’s moved past crying and into seething, the intercom buzzes. He stares at it for a long time and doesn’t answer, even when it buzzes again. Then his phone chimes. 

_Let me up,_ Alexis writes. He reads the message and sets the phone down and continues seething. _I have pancakes,_ she adds. 

Fuck. 

The next time the buzzer goes off, he presses the button to unlock the front door. When she knocks on his apartment door a minute later, he ignores it as long as he can and seethes some more. 

“Leave the pancakes and go,” he says immediately after eventually letting her in. 

“David-“

“What the hell is wrong with you? What did you… Can’t you just let me be happy for once? What did you even say to him?”

“David, I had to-“

“Had to what? Fuck up my whole life because you don’t _like_ someone?”

He’s never been angrier at Alexis, which is weird because she’s starting to cry and he’s never wanted to comfort her more. He doesn’t. He’s not giving in to being walked all over. Not this time.

“You shouldn’t be with him,” Alexis whispers. 

“Why should I listen to you about who I should or shouldn’t be with? Last night your squeeze of the week dumped you on a helipad and took all your credit cards with him!”

“I just need you to trust me,” Alexis says, and fuck, she’s really crying. 

“Well, I don’t.”

Alexis kind of freezes and stares at him and he refuses to take it back even though he desperately wants to if only to get that look of her face. 

“You don’t trust me,” she says. “Like, at all.”

“Why should I?” He can’t look at her face anymore, so he glares at the countertop. 

“Because…” Alexis struggles again. He’s never seen her struggle this much. He kind of likes it. “Because I love you.”

She hasn’t said that to him since they were little kids, when he would tuck her in because their parents weren’t there and she would smile up at him and chirp _I love you, David_ and he wouldn’t say it back but he’d roll his eyes good-naturedly and tell her to just go to sleep already and they’d both know what he meant. 

It’s silent for a long minute. David doesn’t look at her. He can’t. 

“Just…leave the food and take whichever of my cards you stole to get it and go, okay? Just get a hotel. Or call one of your friends. You have plenty of them, remember?”

“David-“

“Just go.”

He continues determinedly looking away from her. He refuses to let her see that he’s holding back tears.

Finally, he hears the click of the apartment door closing, and he lets them fall. 

He doesn’t see or hear from Alexis for six months.

He doesn’t let himself worry about her. He doesn’t let himself check on her. He tries not to think about what he’ll do if she calls him and tells him she needs his help and it’s literally life or death.

Then the end of the year approaches, and so does the one event neither of them can avoid: the annual Rose Christmas party. 

He brings two guys he’s been sort of seeing just to see his father sweat. 

Alexis brings a self-described actor who spends the first half of the party trying to distribute headshots to anyone at all even vaguely connected to casting directing. 

A few hours in, he finds himself in the Great Hall, kind of hiding behind a giant display of poinsettias while still ostensibly participating in the party. Alexis finds him there just a few minutes later. 

“Hi,” she says, kind of awkwardly, and he kind of loves hearing her sound awkward, like maybe she’s finally feeling how he feels every day of his life. “I brought you an eggnog.”

She holds out a glass, and he takes it with a grudging “Thanks.”

Then he takes a sip and sputters at the burning in his throat. 

“Did someone let Mom spike the eggnog again?” he demands. It’s far from too strong for him, but the alcohol content did catch him off guard. 

“Um, no. It just looked like you could use something extra in yours.”

He can’t help it, he smiles. 

“Where’s Tom Cruise?” he asks. “Run out to print some more headshots?”

“Where are your boyfriends? Dad is super excited to get to know them,” she fires back, but she’s kind of smiling too. 

“Probably off hooking up in one of the guest rooms,” David says airily, a little surprised at his own honesty. It’s in the ground rules that they’re allowed to pair off if they want, but he thinks maybe he should be more upset that they ditched him at his family Christmas party to do it. 

“Hopefully they take long enough to miss The Number,” Alexis offers, and that actually makes him laugh, which she takes as permission to sit down next to him on the plush velvet couch he’s been perched on. 

“They’re about to break up with me anyway. The Number wouldn’t make it any worse.”

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence, then Alexis speaks. 

“David-“

“Don’t,” he says immediately. “Don’t worry about it. I’m over it. Like it was going to last anyway.”

“I-“

“I’m over it,” he interrupts firmly. “Okay? Let’s just be over it.”

“Okay,” Alexis says quietly. David takes a long sip of eggnog, not even blinking now that he’s expecting the burn in his throat.

It’s late, but David can’t sleep, because Alexis is tossing and turning again. It’s more annoying than usual because he’s supposed to get up early to go see a wedding venue with Patrick and Stevie. Meanwhile, Alexis has to get up early to go to the Galapagos Islands, of all places. 

“Alexis,” he hisses. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she retorts, and he can _hear_ her infuriating pout. 

“Stop moving so much.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Yeah, well neither can I if you don’t shut up.”

“You shut up.”

There’s no real annoyance to it. If anything, she just sounds kind of sad. 

“David?” she says after a moment. “Are you still awake?”

“Yes, I’m still awake. Shut up.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

It’s quiet and hesitant and shockingly honest. She’s probably more surprised than he is that she said it. 

A thought occurs to him and he hastily swallows the lump that has formed in his throat.

“Do you remember…” he trails off before he can say _that time we just didn’t talk for six months_ and instead starts again. “Do you remember Andrei?”

There’s a long, tense silence. Maybe that question was all he needed to get her to shut up in the first place. Then she says, softly, “We said we were never going to talk about that.”

“What? No we didn’t.”

“Well, obviously we weren’t going to actually _talk_ about not talking about something, David.”

There are several questions that have been hibernating in the back of David’s minds for years now and they’ve all suddenly awoken, so he ignores that. “What did you say to him? All he said was that you-“ 

He stops himself because telling Alexis that Andrei called her a crazy bitch will either hurt her or make her way too pleased with herself, and he doesn’t need either distracting her.

Unfortunately, she sounds pleased with herself anyway when she says, “I told him I had a mob son on speed dial and when he didn’t believe me, I called and let them chat a bit.”

“You had a mob son on speed dial?” David doesn’t know why he’s shocked by this, but he is. 

“Tony, remember?”

“Tony was a _mob son_?”

“Yeah, I was kind of worried that he would have me bumped off when I broke up with him but it turned out he thought we were better as friends too. Anyway, he still owed me for the time I helped him get out of that thing with the Russians.”

“What-“ At the last second, David decides he doesn’t want to know. “Why did you do it?”

“Help Tony with the Russians? I mean, it was a teeny bit my fault they were mad in the first place.”

“No. With Andrei. Why did you tell Andrei to leave me?”

This time the silence is so long he thinks there’s a small chance Alexis actually fell asleep. Finally, she says, voice laced with trepidation, “I can’t tell you.”

“Alexis-“

“I just can’t.” The interruption is firm enough that he doesn’t try again, so she adds, “I just need you to trust me, okay?”

He’s shocked to find that his response to that request is just as automatic as it was all those years ago, even though it takes him a few seconds to process that shock enough to give it. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

She’s shocked too, and he doesn’t want either of them examining it further so he downplays the whole thing. “I mean, I don’t know what I was thinking. Australian. Really.”

“Well, you had that weird crush on Steve Irwin in high school.”

“I did not have a _crush_ on Steve Irwin!”

“Yeah, you watched that show all the time because you love alligators so much.”

“They were crocodiles.”

“Whatever. Big lizards. Gross.”

“Wow, you are going to love the Galapagos.” Her silence at this actually makes him feel kind of bad, so he adds, reluctantly, “I’m going to miss you too.”

“I love you.”

It’s almost a whisper. Maybe he wasn’t even supposed to hear it. He smiles in the dark and rolls his eyes even though she can’t see him.

“Go to sleep already,” he says, and she laughs.


End file.
